Maxbialystock

Back to Young. My guess is the Sox got him (for $13M/2years) as kind of a back-up and maybe figured he couldn't be too bad if he played 140 games for the Yankees last year. They probably figured they were solid in CF and RF barring injuries. For the remaining LF slot they had Castillo, Holt, and Young. Of those three Young is clearly the most experienced MLB outfielder, but the question was could he hit. As of today, June 8, I think it is beyond question Young was a smart acquisition. His hitting, especially against righties, has been surprisingly good,--who knows, maybe Davis helped him-- and his fielding is better and certainly smarter than Castillo, Holt, or Swihart's. At his age, 32, he ain't the long-term fix, but meanwhile he's pretty useful, and all the carping critics who argued that playing Young against righty pitchers demonstrated Farrell's malfeasance and ignorance might be carping a little less these days.

Never read that one, but it's pretty good and by the same guy, Emerson.

I thought I'd return to this thread one more time with this thought, that the notion of having computers call balls and strikes is not getting much traction in any news media I am aware of. So, please, you advocates of purifying the strike zone, set me straight. Show me a link to a story about how umpires calling balls and strikes is bad for baseball and must be fixed. I dare ya. Heck, I double-dare ya.

Decathlons can be boring, maybe even very boring. But they are overall terrific competitions because of the variety of things they have to do. Rarely, however, to decathletes go mano a mano. Roller derby is probably more fun to watch.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Actually, I would prefer that runners occasionally run into outs because never running into outs--trying to steal or trying to get an extra base--means you are taking zero risks on the basepaths. For example, in a recent game Betts was thrown out going from first to third on a single to right field, but it took a beautiful, dead-on throw to get him. I'm fine with that--that's exactly the way to run the bases, when only a perfect throw will beat you. On the other hand, several years ago, maybe before Farrell, Nava was on 2B and someone hit a shot off the RF wall/fence at Fenway. About the time the ball hit the wall/fence, Nava was sliding back into 2B, just to be sure he couldn't be thrown out. He never got to 3B. That sir, is the result of cautious baserunning--or maybe idiocy.

Ellsbury is coming back a little. I read something recently, albeit written in April, in a NJ paper that the real comparison should be Ellsbury vs. Cano because it was Cano's departure for Seattle--I think their offer was $240M for 10 years--that caused the Yankees to spend big on Ellsbury. Right now Cano is having a heckuva year.

I think you mean pitching everytime. I said something like that in the OP when I said some believe pitching is 75% of the game. However, the Sox are rarely, if ever, led by really good pitching. The exception might be their really superb pitching in the 2013 playoffs when their ERA was 2.00. Their usual winning formula is topnotch hitting and good but not great pitching.

Nor have I.

That's a pretty good defense of Swihart. I think he actually misplayed two popups, but the real point is that management bailed out on him as a catcher, probably because Vazquez was healthy and their first choice all along. Long term, I prefer him in LF over Castillo and Young as well. But this year I don't think his injury hurts the team much. Young and Holt can fill in nicely as they were before Swihart was brought back up. Castillo, I fear, was a mistake.

If the truth be known, I too have a low bar for managers. I think they are mostly, not always, interchangeable.

That 93 run differential is wrong. It's really half that. I was looking at hits and converted them to runs.

They are aggressive, but the evidence is that it's been effective and not, as you say, idiocy. The Sox currently lead the AL in runs scored by 93 runs, which is a ridiculous margin--close to 2 runs/game than 1 run per game. And you honestly believe they are running the bases like idiots?

The subject of the OP is referendum on John Farrell, and I choose to defend him. At the beginning of the thread, there were lots of folks saying he needed to go. Now not so many. You say that that's because Farrell's decisions have miraculously improved, and I say it's the same Farrell making decisions they way he always has. This doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong, but it is my opinion.

That 12th best ERA is based on 57 games, which is a heckuva lot more than going thru the rotation one time.

Age-old question with a simple answer: you really need both. But, if you can only have one, shouldn't it be pitching? Some say that's 75% of the game. The Boston Red Sox however have done remarkably well--not just this year, but in other years--when their hitting has been way better than their pitching. Right now the Sox ERA is 12th best in the AL, but they still have 33 wins, 2d most in the AL. Of course, the hitting could come back to earth. Or maybe the pitching will actually become respectable.

Good thread. Difficult situation for Farrell, but I agree Leon is probably going to catch Wright, something he should be delighted to do because it gets him back in Boston. If he knows about Mirabelli, he just might see a career in catching Wright, as difficult and frustrating as that now appears to be.

Actually, I just think Swihart is over-rated. Last year I was very pro-Swihart because of his age and inexperience, so I was stunned that, with all that 2015 experience plus spring training, plus apparently being handed the starting catcher job, the Sox manager and FO apparently decided very quickly Swihart was a detriment behind the plate. So much so they sent him to Pawtucket and told him to acquire outfield skills. Once you convert to LF, my opinion, then you need to be a pretty good hitter, and I'm not so sure Swihart is. All the Swihart fans, of which there are many, I'm sure, need to acknowledge that he probably isn't that great young catching prospect we all thought he was. I think it's true that he became a catcher after he entered the Sox farm system. Before that he was an infielder/outfielder, which means the catching thing was an experiment, which the FO appears to have decided to abandon. When Holt was hurt, I thought giving Swihart a shot was a good idea, better than Castillo. But right now I'm thinking Swihart on the DL ain't a big loss because the Sox have other decent options for LF-- Young, Castillo, and Holt. Swihart won't be missed.

Who bumped this thread up? All I have to say is a lot of guys wrote Young off a little too quickly.

Good points. I should have said Swihart's hitting is good enough for a catcher, but not for the Sox LF slot. And his play behind the plate is what keeps him from being a viable MLB catcher.

royf19, The answer is none of them were any good--according to Sox fans. A few claim they loved Francona, but that nickname Francoma came from fans. Remind one and all: I don't believe that managers are uniformly good or that they are unfireable. Firing usually takes place when a team overall underperforms in the judgment of ownership or the FO, and that is just the way it is. Francona was actually pretty decent, but the Sox collapsed in 2011, plus there was the beer and chicken thing. Plus Francona wasn't fired--his contract simply wasn't renewed. Now he seems to be doing a good job in Cleveland.

I love these threads precisely because of their borderline irrelevance. Why? Because neither player--Swihart or Castillo-- is that important given what else is going on with this team. Indeed, so far the best LF by far this year is Young, a solid all-around player who played in 140 games for the Yankees last year and who has a $13M contract with the Sox for 2 years. Castillo can't hit and makes too many errors in the field. The tattoo on his arm, "made in Cuba," ain't going to be enough. I like the idea of Swihart--best young catcher in years, could even out do Yaz in LF, etc--far more than the reality, which is that he has yet to show he can hit MLB pitching or that he isn't a disaster behind the plate. Claiming he is a lock in LF is just another pipedream.

I can't find the page, but early on in this thread one of the raps against Farrell was his willingness to play Young in LF. You know, the guy whose OPS right now is over .900. But back then playing him, especially against righty pitchers, was considered proof that Farrell was clueless in Seattle. Who's clueless now?

Young is better. Not for a trade, but in LF.

I thought ERod's problem today was he did not have the good changeup, one that was down in the zone but still hard to resist swinging at. The notion he wasn't throwing hard enough is silly when the other guys was shutting us down with 89 mph fastballs.